Let’s not forget that past VA scandals have led to worthy reforms

Friday

May 23, 2014 at 12:11 PMMay 23, 2014 at 1:59 PM

The current scandal involving hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs rightly has outraged most Americans and given rise to calls for holding accountable the people responsible for the wrongdoing.

But, of course, this isn’t the first time the VA has been involved in scandal, as Colin Moore reports HERE:

Throughout its history, the VA’s very public failures have shaped its development as profoundly as its successes. If there is any silver lining to our current outrage, it is that in the past, acts of negligence or corruption have led to dramatic improvements in the care veterans receive…

[T]he modern-day network of VA hospitals began to take shape in the wake of World War I, as a disparate group of veterans’ insurance and health programs were consolidated into a single agency. That agency quickly became mired in scandal. In the 1920s, Col. Charles Forbes, the first director the Veterans’ Bureau, devised ingenious ways to bilk the federal government out of millions of dollars. Under his leadership, the VA purchased huge quantities of hospital supplies—including a 100-year supply of floor wax—which were then privately resold as government surplus. For his efforts, Forbes earned a two-year sentence in federal prison, while the loss to taxpayers came in at well over $2 billion in today’s dollars. Although the VA responded to these crimes by adopting strict civil service laws, those rules led it to become an inflexible organization stifled by its regulations…

But thankfully, the story doesn’t end there. After years of neglect, the VA shed its longstanding reputation for medical mediocrity by developing an innovative partnership with medical schools in 1946.

(Snip)

The recent reports of falsified records at the Phoenix VA are deeply troubling—and this agency, now nearly a century old, is no stranger to failure or scandal. But if today’s scandal follows the pattern of prior scandals, there is some reason for guarded optimism: today’s attention could lead to another cycle of much-needed improvements in the quality and availability of health care for America’s veterans.

The current scandal involving hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs rightly has outraged most Americans and given rise to calls for holding accountable the people responsible for the wrongdoing.

But, of course, this isn’t the first time the VA has been involved in scandal, as Colin Moore reports HERE:

Throughout its history, the VA’s very public failures have shaped its development as profoundly as its successes. If there is any silver lining to our current outrage, it is that in the past, acts of negligence or corruption have led to dramatic improvements in the care veterans receive…

[T]he modern-day network of VA hospitals began to take shape in the wake of World War I, as a disparate group of veterans’ insurance and health programs were consolidated into a single agency. That agency quickly became mired in scandal. In the 1920s, Col. Charles Forbes, the first director the Veterans’ Bureau, devised ingenious ways to bilk the federal government out of millions of dollars. Under his leadership, the VA purchased huge quantities of hospital supplies—including a 100-year supply of floor wax—which were then privately resold as government surplus. For his efforts, Forbes earned a two-year sentence in federal prison, while the loss to taxpayers came in at well over $2 billion in today’s dollars. Although the VA responded to these crimes by adopting strict civil service laws, those rules led it to become an inflexible organization stifled by its regulations…

But thankfully, the story doesn’t end there. After years of neglect, the VA shed its longstanding reputation for medical mediocrity by developing an innovative partnership with medical schools in 1946.

(Snip)

The recent reports of falsified records at the Phoenix VA are deeply troubling—and this agency, now nearly a century old, is no stranger to failure or scandal. But if today’s scandal follows the pattern of prior scandals, there is some reason for guarded optimism: today’s attention could lead to another cycle of much-needed improvements in the quality and availability of health care for America’s veterans.